To Make an End is to Make a Beginning

"The end is where we start from" (T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding)

At this time of year "Valedictory" begins to appear as a way of describing events around the College. Resident students triumphed (at least over boredom) in "Survivor: Bulpadock", their imaginative approach to Valedictory Day activities, two weekends ago. An End of Year dinner provided a somewhat more formal setting for celebration, and last Sunday the End of Year service was the most reflective opportunity for departing resident students to mark this transition.

Similar activities are in mid-stream in the Theological School and yet to come for Foundation Studies students.

All these festivities mark departures. I have noted before that a College such as this exists to send people away - hopefully after years of work, play and reflection, with deeper experience and higher aspirations.

One particularly important departure is Peter Tregear's. After two years of outstanding service to the College as Dean, Peter is to step down early in 2008 to pursue his academic research and teaching. In 2006 and 2007 Peter has initiated and overseen key events and programs that have expressed the highest aspirations of the College. This year's Caldwell Lectures were in quite different areas, exploring history, art and law; yet the presence at Trinity of world-class historians Richard Evans and David Starkey was also a sign of Peter Tregear's imagination and commitment.

Other of his initiatives have been musical, not surprisingly - the initiative of making the prize-winning TinAlley String Quartet our "Quartet in Residence" is an obvious example. Peter's immediate attention will go to his continuing role as a Fellow in the Faculty of Music at the University of Melbourne.

I know you will join me in wishing Peter and our departing students well, even as we strive to maintain the standards of excellence and imagination they have set for us. Farewells are inevitably tinged with sadness, but it is good for us to celebrate them as we do. They are, after all, really beginnings. I also know well from experience that Trinity has a way of calling us back!